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DESCRIPTION OF THE NEW ENGLAND mSTORIC, 

GENEALOGICAL SOCIETY'S HOUS^. 

I 
By tlic Rev. Edmund F. Slafter, A.M. 

[From the Preface to the Hon. Chinles H. Bell's Dedication Discourse, Boston, 1871.] 

wr" -"~~^»==^^"='^^=* _">.^ ^'^^^ rf">HE house is situated on an eligi- 

X ble site in Somerset Street, north- 
east of the Capitol, on the declivity of 
Beacon hill. Its location is near the 
valuable library of the Boston Athenas- 
uni, the State Library at the State 
House, the Record Office for deeds and 
wills of Suffolk county, and the City 
Hall. It was erected in 1805 for a 
dwelling-house, and was so used until 
it was purchased by the Society on the 
rith of March, 1870. It is construct- 
ed of brick, strongly built, four stories 
in height by the original arrangement 
of flats, having a front of twenty-nine 
feet and five or six inches, and a depth 
of foity-two feet and a fraction over, 
with an extension in the rear of about 
twenty-one or two by a little over thir- 
teen feet. The front is faced with a 
composition known as " concrete stone "; 
~«~^:is^i^*=- Msscu^mctuiisaMe it is uiade in blocks, and resembles a 

grayish sandstone, while the heavy caps of the windows and doors, and 
other tiimmings, are of sandstone from Nova Scotia. Over the entrance is 
inscribed : — 

NEW ENGLAND 

HISTORIC, GENEALOGICAL 

SOCIETY. 

There are three rooms on the first floor : the one in front is occupied at 
present as a reception-room, where members of the Society may meet for 
consultation and general conversation;* in the rear of this is the Directors' 
Room, where they hold their monthly meetings and where the officers pre- 
pare their correspondence. It is furnished with desks, cases and drawers 
for their convenience. These two rooms have white marble fire-places, 
with grates for open fires. The extension, nineteen and a half by eleven 
feet in the clear, is constructed into a Fire-proof Room. It has double 
walls of brick ; the floor and ceiling are also of brick and cement arched 
upon iron girders of great strength, capable of resisting falling walls or 
timbers in case of fire. It is furnished with slielves and a hundred and 
twenty-one drawers for receiving the rare books and manuscripts belonginir 
to the Society. 

* Tliis room is now sliclved and used entirely for pamphlets. — Editor, 




x<. E. Hist. aeni. 3-^ 




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On the secofwi floor there are :ilso tliroo rooms: one over the entrance 
hall, and another oyer the Fire-proof Room, both used for the reception 
and arrangement 06 books and pamphlets; the third has an area of forty 
by twenty feet, ii\v\ contains that part of the library which is in most con- 
stant use. The e.itire walls are lined with glazed cases of black walnut, 
in whicii the books are protected from dust. It is furnished with tables and 
desks for the convenience of tho .e who may resort to the library for his- 
torical investigation. This room is known as the Library. 

The third and fourth stories of the original structure are thrown into one, 
and the whole area is occupied as a hall for the public meetings of the So- 
ciety. It is agreeably lighted from the roof and by windows in front and 
in the rear. A gallery, approached by an iron stairway, extends around 
the entire hall. The walls above the gallery are line(i throughout with 
shelves, which are filled with books less frequently called for. A dais rises 
at the east end of the hall, which is occupied on public occasions by the 
president and other officers of the Society, and tlu; readers of historical 
papers. The cellar is dry and commodious for storage, and contains a large 
furnace from which heat is conveyed to every part of the building. All the 
rooms throughout the house are furnished with gas-fixtures and chandeliers, 
by which abundant light is furnished whenever it is needed for reading or 
writing. The cost of the property, including the reconstruction of the 
house and its adaptation to the purposes of the Society, has been over 

FOKTY-THREK THOUSAND DOLLAKS. 

[An elaborate and carefully jirepared history of the Society's estate, in 
Somerset street, from the first settlement of P.oston to the present time, by 
the Rev. Mr. Slafter, will be found in the appendix to his " Quarter Cen- 
tury Discourse," delivered before the society on the 18th of March, 1870, 
pages 43 to 47. 

The Society's House is on the west side of Somerset street, midway 
between Ashburton place and Allston street, and is numbered eighteen. 
In the adjoining house, the late Rear-Admiral Charles H. Davis, U.S.N. 
[ante, xxxi. 340) was born, the two houses having been built in 1805, by his 
father, the Hon. Daniel Davis, solicitor general of the commonwealth of 
Massachusetts. Nearly opposite, on the east side of the street, stands the 
house in which the Hon. James Lloyd entertained Lafayette as his guest in 
1825. It is now a public house known as the " Somerset." A short distance 
north, on the east side of the street and numbered 37, is a house in which 
Daniel Webster at one time resided. On the same street, not far distant 
to the south, will be found the editice erected, and, till within a few years 
occupied, by the First Baptist Church ; and the Congregational House, in 
which Tlie Congregationalist and The lAlerary World are published, and the 
Congregational Library and various societies are located. Other objects of 
interest in this vicinity are noticed in Drake's " Old Landmarks of Boston," 
pp. 362-6.— Editor.] 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 




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